Maine’s Democratic speaker of the House sued Gov. Paul LePage (R) on Thursday for allegedly blackmailing a private school into firing him as its top administrator.
Speaker Mark Eves (D) filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Portland that alleged LePage told the Good Will-Hinckley School to either fire Eves as its president or have $500,000 in state funding withheld from it, which would result in the school losing an additional $2 million in private funding. The suit stated that LePage thus cost Eves his livelihood without due process and retaliated against him for exercising his First Amendment right to speak out against the governor’s policies.
“The Gov. used taxpayer dollars to punish me for speaking out against his misguided positions on education, energy, and taxation,” Eves said in a statement. “His actions are a blatant violation of the First Amendment rights of all Maine citizens who are entitled to have their legislators speak out freely and independently. The Governor’s action against the Good Will-Hinckley School and me is just one example of a well-known pattern of his use of his powers as governor to bully and intimidate anyone who dares to disagree with him.”
A spokesperson for the governor sent a statement to TPM saying Eves’ suit was politically motivated.
“This is a political lawsuit,” spokeswoman Adrienne Bennet said. “It has no legal merit and is the Democrats concerted attempt to accomplish what they couldn’t at the ballot box inside a courtroom.”
LePage himself addressed the allegations Thursday morning in an interview with local radio station WGAN. The governor said he threatened to pull funding from Good Will-Hinckley because he believed Eves was an enemy of charter schools, according to The Portland Press-Herald.
“It’s just like one time when I stepped in … when a man was beating his wife,” LePage told the radio station, as quoted by the Press-Herald. “Should have I stepped in? Legally, No. But I did. And I’m not embarrassed about doing it.”
Read the lawsuit below:
